And he went away very quickly. He did not touch upon the subject again, but Helen saw that he never forgot it; and, by few words which she heard him say to Lady Davenant about his dislike to half-confidences, she knew he was displeased, and she thought he was wrong. She began to fear that his mistrust of Churchill arose from envy at his superior success in society; and, though she was anxious to preserve her newly-acquired good opinion of Churchill’s candour, she did not like to lose her esteem for Beauclerc’s generosity. Was it possible that he could be seriously hurt at the readiness with which Mr. Churchill availed himself of any idea which Beauclerc threw out, and which he dressed up, and passed as his own? Perhaps this might be what he meant by “the truth is not in him.” She remembered one day when she sat between him and Beauclerc, and when he did not seem to pay the least attention to what Mr. Beauclerc was saying to her, yet fully occupied as he had apparently been in talking for the company in general, he had through all heard Granville telling the Chinese fable of the “Man in the Moon, whose business it is to knit together with an invisible silken cord those who are predestined for each other.” Presently, before the dessert was over, Helen found the “Chinese Man in the Moon,” whom she thought she had all to herself, figuring at the other end of the table, and received with great applause. And was it possible that Beauclerc, with his abundant springs of genius, could grudge a drop thus stolen from him? but without any envy in the case, he was right in considering such theft, however petty, as a theft, and right in despising the meanness of the thief. Such meanness was strangely incompatible with Mr. Churchill’s frank confession of his own faults. Could that confession be only for effect? Her admiration had been sometimes excited by a particular happiness of thought, beauty of expression, or melody of language in Mr. Churchill’s conversation. Once Beauclerc had been speaking with enthusiasm of modern Greece, and his hopes that she might recover her ancient character; and Mr. Churchill, as if admiring the enthusiasm, yet tempering it with better judgment, smiled, paused, and answered. “But Greece is a dangerous field for a political speculator; the imagination produces an illusion resembling the beautiful appearances which are sometimes exhibited in the Sicilian straits; the reflected images of ancient Grecian glory pass in a rapid succession before the mental eye; and, delighted with the captivating forms of greatness and splendour, we forget for a moment that the scene is in reality a naked waste.”